John Joseph Ryan, 92, Assemblyman and Judge

By WOLFGANG SAXON

Published: April 24, 2004

John Joseph Ryan, formerly a Democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn and a judge in the criminal and claims courts, died on April 16 at a nursing home in Hinsdale, Ill. He was 92 and formerly a resident of Brooklyn as well as Breezy Point, N.Y., and Westfield, N.J.

His death was announced by the Dooley Funeral Service in Westfield.

Starting in 1947, Mr. Ryan served in the New York State Assembly, representing Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and parts of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant. At one point, in 1959, he was in contention for the post of Assembly minority leader.

Two years later, he joined a legislative commission charged with writing a court reorganization into the state's Constitution.

In 1964, Mayor Robert F. Wagner appointed him to the Criminal Court in Brooklyn, after which he also sat as an acting justice of State Supreme Court. Gov. Malcolm Wilson, who briefly succeeded Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1973, named Mr. Ryan to the State Court of Claims. He retired from the bench in 1982. Judge Ryan, who was born in Brooklyn, graduated from St. John's College in 1933 and from St. John's Law School in 1937. He was a communications officer on troop transports in both the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II and was discharged as a lieutenant commander in 1946.

Back in private practice in Brooklyn, he was elected to the Assembly in a special election in 1947, kept the seat in the 1948 general election and won re-election until Mayor Wagner chose him as a Criminal -Court judge. After he left the bench, he again practiced law in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and retired in 1992. He was president of the St. John's University Alumni Association and of the Association of Criminal Court Judges.

Mr. Ryan's wife of 55 years, Eileen Keegan Ryan, died in 1997. His second wife, Capitola Murphy Ryan, died last year. He is survived by two sons, Robert E., of Clarendon Hills, Ill., and John P., of Westfield; a daughter, Mary Beth Ryan of Greensboro, N.C.; and six grandchildren.